His fight against Newton was truly the best grappling match i have seen in MMA. Love Sakuraba, through out his prime he would always do something different...something surprising. Cartwheels into sidecontrol, jumping on people, slapping Ryan Gracies ass and of course that Spinning back kick against Belfort. Truly a joy to watch...
And he so had W.Silva in that second fight....i might just be a dreamer, but that was his fight.
Here's a list of the accomplishments of the Gracie Killer:
-2000 PRIDE Openweight Grand Prix Semi-Finalist
-Longest Fight in PRIDE FC History at 90 minutes
-First Man to Defeat Royce Gracie in MMA history
-Most Valuable Player (2000)
-Outstanding Performance (1999)
-UFC Japan Heavyweight Tournament Winner
-Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 2004)
-2001 Best Box Office Draw
-2001 Feud of the Year (vs. Wanderlei Silva)
-2000 Best Shootfighter
-2000 Best Shoot Match (vs. Royce Gracie)
I could hate on Sakuraba in a post and still have it come out sounding posetive. Observe.
Sakuraba is the true measure of how far todays JMMA has fallen. I refuse to beleive that Japan simply put couldn't have found the next sakuraba. It's a displined people. They have a strong understand of wrestling, and submissions.
It baffels my mind the over over complacency to not improve but you can't find one fighter from Japan that could be half as good as sakuraba was.
I honestly have no idea why. I thought it was an issue of size but than I'm at a lose on why Kid Yamato crashed and burned as bad as he has.
Yeah, I think part of the problem was that they didn't see a need to improve. That is why Aoki, Sakuraba, and Yamamoto all crashed. Then Dream tried to milk them as much as they could and it backlashed.
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